


Tarot Cards

by BloodyAbattoir



Series: Your Reality Is A Nightmare [31]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:34:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21702307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyAbattoir/pseuds/BloodyAbattoir
Summary: They've always warned you. You've never listened to them.
Series: Your Reality Is A Nightmare [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/139122
Kudos: 2





	Tarot Cards

There came a point in your life where you began to be obsessed with the future. Once a go with the flow sort of person, you now demanded that everything be planned out, never to deviate from the set itinerary. Of course, you could only control your own life, you could only know, in theory, what would happen in your life, not the lives of those around you. Truth be told, you couldn't even know what would happen in your own life in the days or weeks that would follow any given moment. After all, human beings do not exist in a vacuum - they exist in a world populated by other living things, and the world itself was interactive, alive and always changing.

It frustrated you to no end, until finally, you decided that you were not going to be subject to the whims of nature, the easily swayed aspects of the other living beings that populated this world. You desired forbidden knowledge, that which cannot be known, the outcomes of things that have yet to pass. You did not put stock into crystal balls and fortune tellers, having neither the finances nor the visions to make either of those work. Palmistry was out as well, something set and static, a broad overview of a life painted in wide strokes where you wanted the intricate details of the day to day.

Sooner or later, a deck of tarot cards find their way to your house. They are dark things, gloomy blacks and greys dominating the suites, wretched twisted figures dancing and cavorting about as they tell you the hundreds of ways that you are doomed in minute detail, a sharp contrast to the bright colours and pretty scenes of most typical card decks. It matters not, as you have fallen in love with them, they are perfect, a reflection of your very soul, and you take pride in them. They are your children, all 78 of them, from the Major Arcana to the Minor, each of them accounted for and cherished, even Death, no matter that she had nearly put you off the deck to begin with. Soon enough, they rarely, if ever leave your side, hidden under your pillow by night, shoved into whatever purse you carried by day.

As the bond between you and these infernal things grow, so does their accuracy. They are still your children, but they have grown bitter, scathing, vicious, quick to call you out, along with anyone else who dares to ask for their advice, sarcastic, a slap in the face. You still cannot bear to part with them, cannot bear to cleanse them, remove whatever lingering energy clings to them. No doubt, it must be something heavy. They'd seen you through the worst of times, and you were intent on keeping them through the best of times as well.

They may as well be pickled things for how salty they are, but you liken them to black coffee - bitter yet invigorating, and perhaps, you admit to yourself, a bit more than others can handle. You stop doing readings for others - they cannot handle the harsh callouts, the cold bluntness of your children. It would be better if they never saw the light of day again.

Some days, you consider burning them, taking one of your numerous cigarette lighters to them, one by one, watching the paper burn and the paint and laminate popbubblesizzlerun until there is nothing left of them save for a pile of ash. You've caught yourself at least once before, lighter in one hand, cards in the other. And yet, you always stop before any damage is done. They have spent days scattered face down on your bedroom floor, discarded in disgust after another reading, only to be lovingly collected, cards counted and accounted for, turned right side up and wrong side down, suites in order just as they arrived in the box, long since forgotten. They have been cursed at, screamed at, threatened, thrown across a room in a fit of pique, and yet, you cannot bring yourself to abandon them, to pass them along to someone else, to allow any harm to come to them.

They are yours and you are theirs.

As the essence of the cards grow stronger, so does the accuracy of the readings. Sometimes, seeing the message in the cards sends shivers down your spine, a primal shudder, a cold finger that reaches out and touches your very soul. No matter how many times you shuffle, how many times you attempt to glean another answer, they give you the same message, the same cards. Other times, seeing what they have to tell you sends you into a fit of rage that has you seeing red, cursing the gods and everything and everyone around you. You have quickly learned not to ask the questions that you cannot bear to know the answer to.

More often than not, however, they provide you with nonanswers, more frustrating and maddening than a thousand unwanted answers, calls to use your head, use your own intuition and stop relying on them. They tell you things that you already know, things that you cannot bring yourself to admit to another living soul, not even yourself. They tell you things that you cannot possibly know, the status of someone else's relationship, the future that is not yet set in stone. These are the readings that you initially sought them out for, but now, they leave you feeling slightly scandalous afterward, a voyeur even though you've never so much as stalked anyone's social media page to find old photos of them.

These are the cards that do the dirty work for you, and you both love and hate them for it.

You have long since learned to heed the warnings, take their advice into consideration, never ask anything you didn't truly want to know the answers to. They have both broken your heart and put it back together a dozen times over. As much as you wanted to rid yourself of them some days, you have come to the conclusion that you would be wholly lost without them, your little helpers that tell you the future, give you insight into current events, put past ones into context.

They are you, and you are them, and on and on and on it goes, until you barely know where you end and they begin. You consider them an extension of you, much in the same way you consider your hair or your glasses an extension of yourself. They are tiny slivers of your soul trapped in paper, your voice of reason and your self control all in one, and you wouldn't have it any other way. Without them, you'd be lost, unable to see into the future. More importantly, however, without them, you would be unbearably lonely, cripplingly so.

You set out to purchase a set of tarot cards to help you see into the future. What you got instead was a set of 78 life companions, your best frenemies, a mosaic of shattered glass that reflected yourself in dozens of ways over. Now, you cannot imagine, let alone remember a life without them, a life without your freaks and monsters that rarely give you a moment of peace, a blissfully ignorant thought, the ability to fly without falling, but yet, are always there to catch you when you inevitable crumble away under pressure, always there to patch you back together again, to give you a new course of action.

This is love, or at least, the closest thing that you will get to love after having burned down all of your bridges so you could dance in the ashes.


End file.
